Red in the Dark

First posted October 2019.

It is a story you know: a story you may not remember hearing, or reading, but somehow, you know. It is a story woven into the fabric of the world, so long a part of us that it no longer belongs to its heroine; or rather, that its heroine is no longer one person, but many, and the story belongs to all of them now. You know the sun will rise in the east, you know dark clouds bring rain, and you know there is a girl cloaked in red on her way through the woods.

Her mother gives her a basket and a warning: stay on the path. What lies off the path is distraction, danger, death. Don’t look into the dark, or it will swallow you whole.

She reaches a fork in the path. Her mother’s words echoing in her head, she takes the direct path, and arrives at her grandmother’s house quickly, and safely, and quietly.

But if she does, there is no story to tell.

She reaches a fork in the path. One side is illuminated in sparkling golden light. Sunbeams shimmer on lush, vibrant leaves and soft green grass. Birdsong trills like an orchestra of a hundred tiny flutes. Butterflies in every colour imaginable flutter from flower to flower, resting on tiny petals with even tinier feet. The girl in red thinks a bouquet of wildflowers would brighten her grandmother’s day. She does not see what lurks past what the light touches.

Or-

She reaches a fork in the path. One side is clouded in grey mist and fog. Tall trees with bare branches loom over the path while a lone owl calls mournfully from within. Cold white light falls through the branches, breaking into dim spotlights in the mist. Something rustles in the dark. A glimpse of hair momentarily flashes into the light and is gone. The girl in red loves a good mystery.

He is a monster. He is a hungry animal, hunting what his instincts tell him is a full, satisfying meal. One can only live on birds and squirrels for so long, after all. He is a metaphor; he is a man, like other men, with all that entails.

He steps into the glimmering sunlight and at once seems a part of the picturesque tableau. The girl in red picks a daisy and offers it to him. He smiles, and it is a smile full of charm, and sincerity, and deceit. He takes the flower. No one sees what becomes of it. It is not important, or it is perhaps of the utmost importance. Perhaps the point is that it disappears.

Or-

A voice calls from the shadows. The dark asks her where she is going. The dark asks her to stay. The dark grins its sharp, gleaming smile in the endless abyss. The girl in red grins back. She has teeth, too. The dark says it will see her again. The girl in red looks forward to it.

She arrives at her grandmother’s cosy cottage at the other end of the woods. The air around it smells of pine, sugar, and brimstone. She opens the door and the cottage is dark as a tomb. Her grandmother lies in bed, her hoarse cough evidencing her illness. The girl in red lights a candle and slowly tiptoes to the bed. Grandmother’s eyes are the wrong colour, blown wide with anticipation. Her ears are the wrong shape, fur-covered and twitching. Her teeth shine in the candlelight before the breath behind them extinguishes the light and they surround the girl in red.

It is dark. The path diverges again.

She is saved, but only by chance. She is saved by a strong, brave man who just so happens to be passing by the cottage. He is a hunter, and hunters know what to do with wolves. With his mighty axe he frees the girl in red from the wolf’s belly. She is lucky, but you may not be.

Or-

She is not saved. She dies, swallowed by the dark, and lives as a warning. Her ghost cries out from the brittle, worn pages, begging little girls to listen to their mothers, to stay on the path, to fear the wolf.

Or-

She tears herself out of the wolf with her own claws, grasping at organs in hands slippery with blood, ripping at flesh with sharp teeth forged in determination and rage. She is the wolf, too.

She is a warning. She is a dare. She is a story, and she grows old, but not up. There is always a little girl in red entering the forest, and there is always a wolf, and there is always a voice saying beware. Once the voice told the girl to beware the wolf, and once the girl did. The tale is told again and again, the girl walks into the forest over and over, and now she knows something she didn’t know before. Now she sees the bones of those who came before her. Now it is the wolf’s turn to be afraid.